


Graves Beyond Windows

by lustmordred



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ghost Sex, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:20:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lustmordred/pseuds/lustmordred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To gaze upon the graves beyond windows… That wound, that star, got to get up, got to see where you are…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graves Beyond Windows

**Author's Note:**

> Summary and title taken from the song ‘Graves Beyond Windows’ by Deadboy and the Elephantmen.

We walk the narrow path  
beneath the smoking skies  
Sometimes you can barely tell the difference  
between darkness and light

  
_Jane Siberry (It Can’t Rain All The Time)_   


 

 **  
_Then:_   
**

 

“So this place in the ass of nowhere, Montana… Butte something?”

Dean lifted a brow and cast his eyes to Sam in the passenger seat. He was slumped in the seat with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his chest. He’d been quiet for the last hour and until he spoke, Dean had thought he was sleeping.

“Wolf Point,” Dean said. He took a last drag off his very last cigarette and flicked the butt out the window before rolling it up.

“Close enough,” Sam said. “We’re going there because of dogs, though? Don’t they have wolves and coyotes and shit like that up in Montana? And guns of their own to shoot them with?”

“ _A_ dog,” Dean corrected. “And yeah, they do. But this is different.”

“Different how?” Sam asked.

“Different because it’s not a fucking wolf or a coyote,” Dean said. There was a service station just a little way up the road. He could see the lights. “I’m gonna stop. You want something?”

“Coffee,” Sam said, finally opening his eyes to look out the window. The car stopped and Sam sat up, then opened the door and got out. “I’ll get the gas.”

“One sugar, one creamer right?” Dean said as he went around the car toward the little building.

Sam smiled a little and removed the gas cap with a twist of his wrist. “Just enough cream to change the color, just enough sugar to cut the taste,” he said.

“Yeah,” Dean said. The bells over the glass door chimed when he opened it and he winced.

~~*~~

 **  
_Now:_   
**

 

Six hundred and sixty-five.

There were six hundred and sixty-five stones. Each one was four inches thick, one foot wide by two and a half feet tall. Each one was cut from white alabaster. Jackson, the night guard said it was pure, but Dean knew better. Some of them weren’t alabaster at all. Some of them glowed in the dark like the tombstones on Boot Hill over in Virginia City, Nevada.

“Five hundred and two with crosses, one hundred and sixty one with stars, only two… two with _nothing_ ,” Dean said, whispering it. “What does nothing mean, Sammy?”

“You ask me that every day, Dean,” Sam said. “It still means nothing, just like yesterday.”

“And no names,” Dean said. “There are no names. Why not?”

“The dead don’t need names.”

“Yes,” Dean said, lips pursing in displeasure. He lifted his hand and laid it against the mesh-lined safety glass. It was cold outside and a misty outline formed around his warm fingers. “Yes,” he repeated, letting his gaze slide upward to the stones beyond the tips of his fingers.

“No.” Patiently. So infuriatingly fucking patient.

“Yes,” Dean said, speaking the word forcefully through gritted teeth. “Sammy. Sam. Your name, see?”

“I’m not the one who needs it anymore, Dean. You are.”

~~*~~

 **  
_Then:_   
**

 

Wolf Point, Montana was on an Indian reservation. It wasn’t big at all either. A town, not a city and maybe not everyone knew everyone, but they could spot a complete stranger with their eyes closed and a hangover. A couple of white strangers stood out like battered thumbs.

“Last victim was a woman too,” Dean said, coming out of the court house and down the steps to the car. “Twenty-four, blonde, pretty—”

Sam quirked a brow. “Aren’t they usually?” he said. He pushed away from the side of the car and got in while Dean went around the hood. “I mean, there aren’t a lot of creepy crawlies that prey on fat, ugly, old crazy cat ladies in house shoes, are there?”

Dean rolled his eyes and got in the car. “Whatever, smart ass,” he said, and started the car. “Anyway, I got her parents’ names and, with a little sweet talking from yours truly, addresses. Ah, and there’s some holy man named something Red Horse that the woman mentioned.”

“Red Horse? You mean a shaman?” Sam said.

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean said. “He’s an elder or something. Knows a lot about the area. I just thought it might be worth talking to him.”

“Probably,” Sam said. “Is that where we’re going then?”

“Nope,” Dean said. “I’m looking for a Motel 6. We’ll go pester the old folks after a nap.”

Sam snorted and let his head fall back on the head rest of his seat. “A nap,” he repeated. “Sure, Dean.”

Dean scowled and reached out to turn on the radio. He got static, tuned it and got Willie Nelson. He flicked it off with a look of disgust. “Yes, a nap. I’m fucking tired, so what?”

“Nothing, Dean,” Sam said.

~~*~~

 **  
_Now:_   
**

 

“Asshole,” Dean muttered, turning his head to look at Sam over his shoulder.

“Sometimes,” Sam said calmly, a little smile curving his lips.

Dean shifted his eyes back to the window. “They’ll put me there,” he said. “No name on a blank stone. Or a cross stone. I don’t know anymore.”

“It’s not so bad,” Sam said.

“You’re in Montana,” Dean said.

“I know that, Dean,” Sam said. “You’re not reminding me.”

“The name’s wrong,” Dean whispered. “And you’re _there_.” He ran a hand through his hair, then smacked it back against the glass. “I never liked Montana. Too many places to hide.”

Sam sighed and rested a hand on Dean’s shoulder, trying to comfort. Dean shivered, but he leaned into the touch anyway. Sam watched goosebumps pebble on his arms and let his hand slide down Dean’s back as he dropped it back to his side.

“You make me sad sometimes,” Sam said quietly.

“You make me sad all the time,” Dean replied, just as quietly.

“You need to let me go,” Sam said, leaning down to whisper it close to Dean’s ear.

Dean shivered and rolled his shoulder under the feeling. He turned his head and looked at Sam. Looked at him and _right through him_ in some places. He lifted his hand away from the window and put it out to touch Sam’s face. He let his palm hover over Sam’s cheek, not making contact, then reluctantly let it fall back to his side. “I can’t.”

“I know.”

~~*~~

 **  
_Then:_   
**

 

“So it’s a wolf then?” Dean pressed. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and looked right into the old Indian man’s face.

Michael Red Horse took a deep pull from his pipe and returned Dean’s earnest, inquisitive look with a blank one of his own. He had eyes like two gleaming black beetles and skin like hide parchment stretched too thin and allowed to sag. He also looked totally unimpressed with Dean and his bullshit.

“Might be a wolf,” Red Horse said enigmatically. “Probably not. Most white folk don’t know a big dog from a big wolf anyway, but probably not. Everyone say it’s a dog. Black like the night with no stars.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean said, sitting back. “So every what? Ten, twenty years this dog shows up and people start dying?”

Red Horse snorted, a puff of tobacco smoke escaping through his nose. “No,” he said. “Don’t happen like that. Wolf dog don’t have himself a schedule.”

Dean frowned. “Alright. So tell me about the last time this happened around here, Mr. Red Horse.”

“ _This_ never happened around here before,” Red Horse said. “But last time the dog was here, I was a boy. Maybe five or six. I remember because it was boys that were being killed then. Boys my age, some a little older. It happened for maybe two months, once or twice every few weeks. Everyone was scared, even my mother and nothing ever scared her, not before that or after, but she was scared then.”

Dean frowned thoughtfully. “Do you remember anything else about the killings back then?”

“Remember whatever it was got my friend, Jacob,” Red Horse said. He blew a stream of blue grey smoke toward the ceiling and let his head rest against the back of his chair. “Remember finding him down by the creek with his guts all out. They were hanging in the bushes like Christmas lights. Shiny like they were dipped in red kerosene. Nobody would tell me because I was just a boy, but I heard my daddy say they was like that because he drug himself.” Red Horse sat up and fixed Dean with his sharp eyes. “Trying to get away.”

Dean looked at the old man with lifted brows for a long moment. The old guy was trying to scare him or gross him out. Maybe chase him off. Dean cleared his throat and stood. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Red Horse. It’s been… damn interesting.”

~~*~~

 **  
_Now:_   
**

 

“Mr. Browning, breakfast is being served in the cafeteria. Would you like me to take you down?”

Dean blinked out at the graves. Browning… Browning… That had been the name on his drivers’ license. Browning like the gun. Like Winchester. Like the gun that killed Sammy.

“Dean,” Sam said.

“What, Sammy?” Dean whispered.

“That woman, the nurse. She’s talking to you. Answer.”

“She wants to feed me,” Dean said. He curled his lip in disgust. “English muffins and marmalade—or peanut butter, take your pick. Pancakes or waffles. Have to give us all _options_ , don’t they? French toast and melon balls. Coffee, milk, your choice of juice. It’s all very… heh.”

“You have to eat something, Dean,” Sam said. “You’re starting to… look sick again.”

“I don’t want it,” Dean said. He whispered it with a fierce biting edge to it like the offending food were the worst kind of poison. “The only reason to eat is to live. Cut out all the sugar and spice and that’s all it is. We eat to live.”

“I know that, Dean,” Sam said. “Look, you’re freaking the little lady out, man. Just go with her. Eat some toast or drink some coffee.”

“One sugar, one creamer,” Dean murmured, turning from the window to look at Sam and beyond her, the frightened little woman in Hello Kitty nursing scrubs. “To change the color and cut the taste. I always remembered, you know.”

Sam smiled. “And still, you always asked.”

“Mr. Browning?” the woman asked. She was cute and blonde, though her hair looked like it had been dyed that way. She sounded a little worried and it made both Sam and Dean smile a little. “Would you like me to take you down?”

Dean considered her, then the floor at his feet. “Can Sammy come with me? I know how he likes his coffee. I can get it for him, you don’t have to.”

The blonde nurse gave him a sad smile. One of those attempting to reassure smiles. The kind that seemed to be reserved specifically for crazy people. “Sure, Mr. Browning. I don’t think the cook will mind if you bring your Sammy to visit.”

“Don’t call him that,” Dean said, and walked by her out the door.

“That was rude,” Sam said as he walked with Dean down the stairs to the main floor. Behind them, the nurse was trying very hard not to look disturbed by Dean’s apparent one-sided conversation.

“What do you care?” Dean asked. He looked around and went over to the coffee pot.

“I don’t really,” Sam said, watching Dean pour out one cup and stir in one spoon of sugar and one little container of liquid creamer. “That smells nice.”

Dean paused and slanted his eyes at Sam. “Can you actually smell it?”

“Yes, I can actually smell it,” Sam said, grinning at him. “Can’t drink it, but that’s okay.” Sam reached over and touched one of Dean’s wrists, lightly trailing his fingertips back and forth over shiny scar tissue. “You drink it.”

~~*~~

 **  
_Then:_   
**

 

When Dean got back to their motel room, Sam was sitting at the table by the window with the curtains drawn, flipping through their dad’s journal.

“Find anything at the library?” Dean said. He tossed his coat down on the bed and flopped down on his back beside it.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Not a whole lot, though. There’ve been sightings of this dog or wolf or whatever it is all the way back to the eighteen hundreds. People always died. Usually a lot of people. I have a few newspaper articles if you want—” He held up some photocopies, but Dean wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

“Great,” Dean said. “I talked to the medicine man. He wasn’t a lot of help. Kind of creepy and he smells funny. But he says it’s a dog too. Black. Says when he was a kid, it ripped up a bunch of his little friends and had the whole village locking up their wigwams at dusk.”

“We should maybe go look around the site tomorrow,” Sam said.

“Yeah, unless it kills someone else while we’re sleeping,” Dean said tiredly. “Then we can go look around _that_ site. That might even be better. Fresher, you know?”

Sam smiled and got up to go over and stretch out on the bed beside Dean. He still had the journal and he held it up to look at one of the pages. “Well then, let’s hope someone else gets ripped to pieces tonight,” he said dryly. “Make our job that much easier. Look at this.”

Dean opened his eyes and looked up at the page Sam had the journal open to. “Black Dog,” he read. He sat up and took the journal from Sam to examine the pages. “Could this be it?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Black Dogs are just like… portents. Like foretellers of doom. A sign that someone’s going to die. They don’t kill people.”

“Oh,” Dean said, frowning. He closed the book and tossed it down on the bed where it bounced once. “Well shit. Is there anything else in there?”

“There are actually a lot of dog-like creatures that lure people into danger and kill them, yeah,” Sam said. “Which is kind of… weird.”

“Not very man’s best friend of them, is it?” Dean said. “What kinds of creatures?”

“Barghest, but again, I’m pretty sure that one’s just a portent, like the Black Dog. A lot of them are, actually. Different places and regions is all, but yeah,” Sam said and then he went back to listing them. “Shuck, Black Shag, Trash, Skriker, Padfoot, Hooter—”

“Hooter?” Dean snickered.

“Yeah,” Sam said. He elbowed Dean gently in the side. “Anyway… Gabriel Hounds, Hounds of the Hills, the Wild Hunt, Bran and Sgeolan, Cusith, Cwn Annwn, Devil’s Dandy Dogs…”

“Wow, okay,” Dean said. “Forget I asked. Let’s just catch a few hours, then go out to the site tomorrow and poke around.”

“Maybe we should try talking to the girl’s family again,” Sam said.

“For what?” Dean asked. “They weren’t there. They don’t know anything that we don’t know. Less even.”

Sam rolled over and off the bed. “That… is not really possible. I’m gonna take a shower.” He looked over his shoulder at Dean, who was lying spread-eagle with his eyes closed, lips slightly parted. “Don’t wait up or anything.”

~~*~~

 **  
_Now:_   
**

 

Dean stared blankly down at the dark liquid in his cup and shivered. “It’s cold in here,” he muttered. Holding his coffee cup in both hands, he picked it up and drank, eyes darting up to lock with Sam’s.

“Maybe it’s just you,” Sam said, looking around at the other patients, all of whom were dressed rather light. He looked back at Dean sitting there across from him in a long sleeved shirt with a sweater over it, still shivering like he was nose-deep in a snow bank.

Dean scowled at him and drank more coffee until he scalded his tongue. “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you,” he said.

“Maybe it is,” Sam said calmly.

“How are we doing today, Mr. Browning?”

Dean glanced up at the sound of that cheerful voice and the sliding squeak of the little wheels of the food cart to see an orderly he knew. He knew him… but not his name. “I’m cold,” Dean said.

“Well then this is just the thing,” the man said and plopped a plate of pancakes in front of him. He slapped a pad of butter on top, drenched the cakes in syrup, and smiled brightly. He was a dark-skinned black man and his teeth looked very shiny white in his face when he smiled. “Now you eat up. You’ll feel loads better.”

Dean made a scoffing sound in his throat and glared down at his plate.

“You need to eat something, Dean,” Sam said, watching the orderly push his cart on to the next table.

“No,” Dean said. He had one hand resting on the back of the other on the table top and his fingers unconsciously stroked back and forth over the scars there. It was a habit now, doing that. One he’d picked up from Sam, who looked at those scars and was always so sad to see them.

“Dean,” Sam said. “Pick up your fork.”

Dean picked up his fork, cut off a small piece of the pancakes and ate it, then tossed the fork down on the plate with a defiant clatter. “There, happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Sam said. “Do it again.”

“No,” Dean snapped, pushing away from the table and standing. He walked by Sam, through the cafeteria, and into the men’s bathroom.

“Dean, damn you, don’t do that,” Sam said, going after him.

There were no locks on the doors, but that was okay. Dean threw up into one of the toilets and it only took a few seconds. He was done when one of the orderlies came in after him.

~~*~~

 **  
_Then:_   
**

 

“There’s nothing here, Sam,” Dean said. He kicked a mound of black soil and scowled down at the toe of his boot. “Blood-stained grass and dirt. Crime scene tape. Not even a stray footprint.”

Sam was crouched over by a tree near where the last woman had been killed. He shook his head and stood, brushing his hands. “You know, I say this a lot, I know, but maybe this isn’t actually our kind of thing,” he said.

Dean lifted his eyes from his shoe and looked at Sam curiously. “How do you explain the sightings of… whatever it is then, huh?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t,” he said. “Maybe it’s nothing, man. Maybe it’s just… a stray dog and some slash-happy asshole with an Oedipus complex and a thing for blondes.”

“Yeah,” Dean said brightly. “You’re right, Sammy, maybe it’s just a coincidence. The whole thing, you know.”

“Maybe,” Sam said, eying him suspiciously.

Dean snorted. “Yeah, and maybe we’re going to just hang out here a while and see,” he said, his tone falling flat again.

Sam groaned and rolled his eyes. “What the hell for?” he demanded. “There is no reason at all to even think whatever—or _who_ ever—it is will come back. I mean, why? The girl’s dead. They buried her before we even got here.”

“Eh, maybe I just like the scenery,” Dean said, clapping Sam on the shoulder as he walked by him. “Come on, Sam, it’s big sky country. Loosen up a little. Yanno, be one with nature and all that shit.”

Sam ran his tongue over the back of his teeth and turned to follow Dean toward the tree line. “It’s getting dark,” Sam pointed out.

Dean looked up at the sky where it was bleeding orange, pink and just a hint of lavender. “So?”

Sam grabbed Dean’s arm, turned him around, and slipped his fingers up the back of his neck. Dean tensed at the suddenness of the action, then met Sam’s eyes and relaxed enough to tilt his head back. Sam grinned and moved his hand around to Dean’s face to run his fingers lightly over his mouth until Dean’s lips parted.

“So…” Sam said slowly, watching him. Dean flicked his tongue out over the tips of his fingers, tasting fresh soil, dust, old blood and, under it, Sam’s skin; salt, oil and magic. Sam’s smile widened. “So we left the flashlights in the car,” he said and let Dean go

Sam turned and walked away and Dean blinked and stared straight ahead for an uncomprehending moment before his eyes narrowed and he snarled a curse. “Fuck you, Sam,” he muttered, feeling in his coat pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. “Asshole,” he muttered around the filter as he lit one. He exhaled and glared after Sam’s retreating back. “Watch out for black puppies, Sam!” he called.

“Portents, Dean!” Sam called back, laughing. “It’s only a harbinger, like I said. Or a stray.”

“Uh-huh, a stray,” Dean muttered. “Sure it is. Dick.”

~~*~~

 **  
_Now:_   
**

 

“You saw it, didn’t you?” Dean said. He was sitting on a bench in the sunlight, still wearing his sweater and shivering. One of the orderlies had finally got him to agree to go outside for some fresh air by threatening to put him on tube feeding again.

“Saw what?” Sam asked.

Dean kicked a bit of chipped rock and watched it bounce down the gravel path. “The dog,” he said. “ _Black Dog_ , harbinger of doom. You saw it, didn’t you?”

Sam lifted a hand and ran it down Dean’s back, up the back of his neck. He wanted it to be soothing, but he knew… it was cold. “Many times,” Sam said.

“You should have told me,” Dean said. “Damn you, Sam. You should have… If I knew… I could have—”

“No, Dean, you couldn’t,” Sam said.

Dean shivered and Sam let his hand fall away.

“I can’t do this, Sammy,” Dean whispered. His voice broke and he swallowed. He lifted his head and looked out over the grounds to the grave stones gleaming whitely pink in the setting sunlight beyond the high fence.

“Yes, you can, Dean,” Sam said sharply. He snatched up Dean’s wrist and turned his hand to expose the silvery lines there. “Yes, you can,” he repeated.

Dean smiled faintly. It was tired and amused at the same time. “Maybe I don’t want to anymore.”

Sam squeezed his wrist, cold pressing skin to bone. “We’re not quitters. You and me, we don’t quit like this. _You_ don’t—”

Dean turned his head and looked at Sam. He let his eyes linger on what he could see and his memory filled in the things that blurred in the sunlight. “I think maybe this time I do, Sam,” he said.

~~*~~

 **  
_Then:_   
**

 

It happened quickly. So very quickly. Like a gunshot or a… No. No, it was exactly like a gunshot.

Sam said he saw something and took off running through the trees. Dean watched him disappear, then went the other direction, thinking to circle around and catch whatever (or whoever) it was between them.

He stopped when he heard the distant _swish, swish_ of movement through the grass and crouched down to listen. Closer, closer… then it stopped and Dean’s fingers tightened around his shotgun.

He wanted to shout for Sam, find out where he was and be sure that he was okay, but if he did that, he’d alert their quarry to his location. Hell, he didn’t even know what they were hunting now. Sam was right; there was no reason for the thing that had killed that girl to come back here. So maybe all they were chasing was a rabbit or a deer. Maybe a coyote or just their own tails.

It was too quiet. It was making Dean nervous.

“Sam?” Dean whispered. There was no reply, so he tried again. “Sam!”

There was a sudden loud snarling sound from the grass off to Dean’s left and he turned toward it, coming to his feet with his shotgun to his shoulder as he did. The next thing… The next thing that happened, he could never really be sure about.

He saw a black dog come charging at him out of the tall grass, a monster creature about the size of a Saint Bernard, all muscle and blue-black fur, mouth open, lips drawn back around teeth like pearly daggers. The beast had fur so dark that Dean could see the stars shining off his back like they were reflected in water as it leaped at him.

That was not the part he would later be unsure about. With what they did every day, what they saw all the time and what they had been raised to do, Dean had long ago stopped doubting the evidence of his own eyes, no matter how fantastical the thing before him seemed to be. The dog was attacking him and Dean was armed, the shotgun was loaded with special casings; half lead shot and half hard rock salt. If the dog was just a dog, the lead would do for it and if the dog was more than a dog, the salt would handle that.

Those were the things he was sure about when he pulled both triggers on the double barrel shotgun and the dog disappeared, quite literally, under a flash of gunpowder.

“Got you, motherfucker,” Dean growled and rested the barrel of the gun on his shoulder.

“Dean.”

Dean’s head came up and his heart stopped. He would swear to fucking god, his heart actually stopped at the sound of that voice. Sam’s voice, wetly and faintly, like he was speaking through a mouthful of water.

“Sam?” Dean said, his voice rasping and strained. He heard a rattling exhalation, Sam breathing—Sam _trying_ to breathe—and pushed through the grass, stumbling toward the sound, screaming for Sam to answer him. “Sam! Answer me, goddamn you!”

“Here,” Sam called. He coughed and gagged, but he lifted his hand and waved it and Dean’s flashlight glanced off his fingers.

“Sammy? Are you okay?” Dean said, falling to his knees beside him. Blindly, still blindly. “Sam?”

Dean put one hand down to brace himself on the ground and his fingers sank into dark, wet mud and finally the smell of blood hit him. It was a familiar smell and enough of it… enough of it smelled like meat. Like raw hamburger on the floor of a slaughter house. There was a lot of blood here and it shone like the black coat of the phantom dog under the star-dotted sky. Blood spotted and streaked the long grass all around them and pieces of ripped flesh hung from the blades and leaves like they were darts. Dean stared numbly as the wind picked up a little and rustled the branches of the bushes and the tall strands of grass, making them wave obscenely with a sound like soft laughter.

The flashlight slid from Dean’s hand and fell with a heavy _thump_ to the ground. Where the beam of light touched it, the blood gleamed dark red. There was no other color in the world like it. Too orange to be maroon, but too red to be compared to tomatoes.

That thought made him gag and Dean had to swallow down bile rising in his throat like claws. He looked at Sam, who lay gasping, trying to draw breath into tattered lungs through the burning pain of the salt crystallized along the mouths of each shredded little wound. Dean finally made himself look at Sam, at his ruined torso, his throat working as he tried to both breathe and swallow down the blood that kept rising in his mouth. He was in so much pain that he was trembling and Dean closed his eyes for a moment and moaned. He couldn’t fix this. He could see that, even by the faint light from his fallen flashlight… this could not be fixed.

“Dean, listen to me,” Sam said, his voice faint, raspy and at the same time, thick with blood and dying. “I found him… I was chasing… he was right… right... Fuck. It’s just a guy. He followed us. Said…” Sam laughed a little, then broke off with a ragged, hacking cough. When he managed to stop, he turned his head to the side and spit blood. “He said we were nosing into his business,” he finished with a wan smile.

Dean crawled to Sam through the blood and mud and leaned down to kiss his face. Quick little presses of his mouth between throaty soothing sounds and distressed whines. “I’m sorry, Sammy,” he whispered. “So sorry. I didn’t mean… I didn’t know it was you. I never—”

Sam lifted one hand and pulled Dean down, his fingers twisted in the back of his coat between his shoulders to hold him and kissed him. Dean’s hands went to Sam’s cheeks and stroked into his hair, fingers catching in the tacky, cold of his blood and held on as he kissed him back. He licked over his tongue, trying to taste Sam, but finding only blood in his mouth. He licked that too, blood coating their lips like gloss and drying, flaking at the corners of their lips, tape-ripping tacky on their mouths as it thickened.

Sam’s chest heaved and he coughed and Dean had to break away with his mouth full of blood. He turned his head a little and spit it out. Some of the blood caught on his lip and ran down his chin, but Dean didn’t notice or care. He dropped his head again and pressed his mouth back to Sam’s and now there was no blood taste. The blood _was_ the taste of Sam and it ran over and over in his head, _This is it. This is all there is._

Dean moaned into Sam’s mouth, felt him shudder and his breath catch and made himself stop. There was a drop of blood on Sam’s chin, smears from Dean’s fingers on his face like Indian war paint and blood caught like scarlet lace in his eyelashes. Dean brushed the tip of his thumb over the drop on his chin and watched it smear under his fingernail. Sam gasped, his breath rattling ominously as he blinked up at Dean, trying to speak. There were tears in the corners of Sam’s eyes with the blood and Dean touched those lightly and frowned, then watched as teardrops of his own fell on Sam’s face and wondered.

“Dean, stop it,” Sam said. His voice was very faint and strained, thick with the shallowness of his breath as his lungs filled with his own blood. “The thing… the killer. It’s a guy. He’s still here somewhere. You have to…”

“I will, Sammy,” Dean promised. He felt Sam relax a little, felt his heartbeat against his skin stutter and falter, ready to stop. He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to Sam’s ear. “Close your eyes now, Sammy. Go to sleep,” he whispered.

~~*~~

 **  
_Now:_   
**

 

It really isn’t that hard to kill yourself in the mental ward of a hospital. In fact, in some ways, it’s easier to accomplish there. Dean’s problem was, he had never really been very good at subtlety. Actually, he kind of sucked at it.

If he had his way, he would have used a gun. Quick and yeah, maybe not so clean, but damn near a sure thing. But there weren’t any guns in the hospital, obviously and they’d taken all of his own weapons when they took Sammy away. So Dean got hold of a fingernail file out of a nurse’s purse one night and slashed his left wrist. Once across and once down. He now had a scar—or rather, two—in the shape of a cross that went the length of his left forearm and tapered off near the inside of his elbow.

He’d cut one of his warding tattoos in half and he had nerve damage so bad in that hand that he could hardly close his fingers to turn a doorknob. Didn’t really matter much though. If some demon wanted to possess him like this, a little tattoo and some Angelic Script wasn’t going to stop them and there weren’t a whole lot of doors that Dean particularly gave much of a shit about opening.

Thing was, he would have succeeded too, goddamnit, except the nurse noticed a tissue sticking out of her purse, looked and found the missing file and sounded the alarm. Dean was on life support for a while. He’d flat-lined twice while they were trying to close his arm up and he’d needed several pints of blood. He tried again while he was still recovering: he’d ripped his stitches out with his teeth.

So now he was on suicide watch. Suicide watch was an orderly named Bruno Buonarroti sitting outside his room in a chair taken from the waiting room, playing video games on his cell phone. Bruno was Italian and he claimed to be descended from Michelangelo Buonarroti. Dean was pretty sure Bruno was full of shit because Sammy told him once that Michelangelo was gay, but Bruno was also a lapsed AA member and he didn’t mind sharing every now and then, so Dean kind of liked him.

“Thanks, Bruno, you’re a nice guy,” Dean said, offering the orderly a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. They never did. Not anymore. Not for a long time now.

“No worries, man, I know how shit is around here,” Bruno said. He sat back down on his chair and started punching buttons on his phone again. He was playing soccer this time. “Yeah, you boys all crazy like fucking whoa in the head, but that don’t mean you shouldn’t have a drink every now and again to _relax_. It’s good for you. Go on now, get some sleep, Mr. Browning.”

Dean nodded and went into his room with the half a bottle of Jim Beam Bruno had so kindly gifted him with tucked against his chest near his arm. In his pocket, Dean closed his hand around the little baggy of white pills he’d been keeping in his mattress. _Saving_ them. Zyprexa meant to make him feel _all better_ about things. Meant to make him accept what had happened to Sam, to deal with it, to feel okay about it and move on.

Dealing with things and moving on were very important in the mental ward.

Dean held the baggy up to the faint light coming through the window and mentally calculated the contents. There was enough. There was actually more than enough. Enough to serve his purposes and possibly catch a little buzz along the way. Which was a good thing, really.

Dean wasn’t a big fan of Zyprexa, but it fit under your tongue just like any other kind of pill and it _did not_ mix well with alcohol. Not well at all.

~~*~~

 **  
_Then:_   
**

 

Dean did catch the killer that Sam was so insistent he find, and he was not surprised at all that it was just a guy. Not even a very old guy, more of a kid really. He was only twenty and his name was Will. The newspapers would call him William Joseph Vaughn. Or just Billy Vaughn if they were trying to work the public sympathy angle.

Billy Vaughn was just twenty, not even old enough to legally buy booze. He’d been picked on in school and dropped out before the ninth grade. His father died in a logging accident when he was fifteen and his mother lived quite well off of his life insurance and pension. Billy wasn’t that smart, didn’t have many friends and he was lazy. So instead of bothering his uncle George for a job at his diner or applying at the local gas station, Billy stayed at home with his mother and helped her around the house.

When his mother was young, she was pretty and blonde, just like the girls he killed.

Later, Dean would remember that and he would remember what Sam said about Oedipus and smile because he’d been right. Sam had always been right about that kind of shit. Even when he was only half serious and fucking around, he was usually right.

But that was later.

That was after Dean found him, hiding in a tree with a hunting rifle and a belt bristling with knives, waiting for Dean. _Listening_. Listening while Sam died and Dean screamed and cursed.

Dean tracked him to that tree, in the dark, and circled around like a hound with a cat treed. He came up behind Billy in his hidey hole and shot him out of the tree. He put a hollow point bullet in Billy boy’s kneecap, shattering it, then hog-tied him with the strap from his shotgun and the one off his own hunting rifle then dragged him, screaming and begging, across two acres of ground covered in rocks, sticks and brambles to the side of the road. He left him for a little while to go rummage in the trunk of the Impala and came back a few minutes later with more rope, his own knives, a wrench, some pliers, a chisel and a hammer.

Billy started screaming and fighting when Dean started to unfasten the belts. Dean slugged him in the side of the head and he passed out. When he woke up, he was bound naked and face down over the back of the Impala, his arms stretched out to either side so tightly that his shoulders ached.

Dean paced back and forth behind him, his boots scraping in the dirt, sending up dust. He noticed the boy was awake and tapped the tip of the knife he was holding to his bottom lip. “You know, the Vikings used to have really… interesting ways of torturing their captives.”

“Look, man, please… _Please just let me go_!” Billy screamed. His voice cracked and he fell silent, gasping and flexing his arms to test the ropes. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. You don’t want to do this, man, you’ll go to jail. They’ll fry you in the electric chair, they’ll—”

“Do you think so?” Dean asked, sounding truly interested to know. “The electric chair, I mean. I didn’t know they did that in this state. Huh. I thought, cowboys and Indians and all that shit, they’d maybe hang me for it.”

Billy started to cry and shake then. “Oh god, you’re crazy, aren’t you? You’re going to kill me. Oh god, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody, I didn’t—”

“Mean to get caught, I know. Ain’t that a pisser?” Dean said. He ran the edge of his knife down the hollow line of the boy’s spine and laughed softly when he jerked. The skin under the blade cut very shallowly, like a cat scratch. “Anyway, as I was saying about the Vikings—”

“Vikings?” Billy yelped. “Dude, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I—”

Dean hit him in the back of the head with his fist around the hilt of his knife. The boy’s head snapped forward and his forehead hit the trunk of the car with a _thud_. “Then shut up and pay attention. You might learn something,” Dean said.

Billy hung his head and started to wail.

Dean grinned and went back to pacing. “Anyway, as I was saying. The Vikings, according to legend, did this thing to their enemies. The really bad ones. I mean the ones they really fucking hated, you know what I mean? This thing—they called it _the blood eagle_ — is where you… break open their chest, kind of crack open the ribcage, and pull their lungs through slits in their ribs, then leave them hanging there.”

Dean went around to lean on the trunk of the car and look Billy in the eye. He touched the tip of his knife to the boy’s nose and grinned. “They sort of _flutter_ like so in the wind like wings,” Dean said, making fluttering wing motions with his fingers to demonstrate.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Billy moaned. He closed his eyes. He was shaking so violently that the involuntary movement had already chafed his wrists until they were bleeding.

Dean reached out with the knife and used the blade to push some fallen mouse-brown hair back from Billy’s sweaty face. “Oh yeah,” he said, like he had just remembered something. “And you’ll be alive when I do this.”

~~*~~

 **  
_Now:_   
**

 

Dean sat on the side of the bed as he took his last three pills with the last few swallows of whisky. Then he put the bottle on the floor by the bed and lay down on his side to wait.

“ _Little Sammy Blackbird was shot to death in spring_ ,” Dean whispered in a light, sing-song voice. “ _They put his heart in a mason jar and listened to it sing…_

“Dean, what did you do?” Sam whispered.

The bed dipped under Sam’s light weight and Dean blinked his eyes open. He stared at the little plastic bag on the nightstand, weighed down under one corner of the Jim Beam bottle so it wouldn’t float away. Sam reached over him to pick it up and Dean smiled and took his hand.

“It wasn’t spring, Sammy, I remember,” Dean said, rolling onto his back to look up at Sam’s face.

In the dark, Dean could see him more clearly than by day because he had the darkness of night behind him and no light to blend into. He lifted his hand, the one not holding Sam’s and touched Sam’s cheek. There were scars there once, but they were gone now. Scars were marks that testified to life and there was no life here. The cold on his fingers was all the confirmation of that he needed.

“When was it, Dean?” Sam asked.

“It was summer. Summer in eastern Montana and ninety-five in the shade on a cool day,” Dean said. He sat up and took his hand out of Sam’s long enough to pull his shirt off and tug the tie free on his pajama trousers. “We had sex on the bed in that shitty motel and the air conditioner broke. There was so much sweat we were sliding around in it.” Dean dropped his shirt off the bed and kicked his trousers away, then pulled Sam down on top of him and pressed his face into the side of his neck. “I remember you. Please say you remember me too, Sammy.”

Sam nudged the side of Dean’s face. Dean’s skin rose with goosebumps, but he didn’t let go and Sam didn’t try to make him. “I remember,” he said. “Dean, we can’t do this now. I’m not… I’m not _really_ here, you know.”

“Yes, you are,” Dean said. He didn’t sound pleased by it, though. He sounded tired. “In some ways. Because I won’t… _can’t_ let you go. I’m sorry, Sam. So sorry, so sorry—”

Sam put his hand to Dean’s mouth. “Shh, I know,” he said. “Now tell me about my heart and the mason jar.”

Dean frowned and shifted under him. He ran his hands down Sam’s back, then back up to thread his fingers through his icy hair. “Sammy’s heart’s with Sammy’s body. In the ground,” Dean said softly. “I gave it back. They took me away and made me give it back.”

Sam stroked his hands down Dean’s sides and made soft, soothing sounds. “It’s okay, Dean, I’m not mad,” he murmured.

“I’m dangerous,” Dean said, hissing it like it was a secret. “And incompetent, they say. It’s just a nice way to say I’m fucking crazy, isn’t it? But they don’t really know.”

“No,” Sam said. He lowered his head and kissed Dean, a trail of open mouthed, freezing kisses along his jaw to his mouth.

“Sam?” Dean said.

“Hmm?”

“When I die, do you think I’ll let you go?” Dean asked, sounding a little frightened by the idea. “Or will you keep me instead?”

“I don’t think it will matter anymore,” Sam said. He smoothed his hands down Dean’s ribs, cold fingers tripping over each one and making him shudder. “I’ll keep you if I can.” Sam whispered, watching him. “Do you really want me to—”

Dean’s lips twitched in a little amused smile and he pulled at Sam’s back. “I want you to try,” he said. He lifted his head up to lick Sam’s mouth, remembering the taste and shine of blood even as he tasted snow and cool water instead.

Sam nodded and held Dean’s weight over his thighs, then rolled his hips forward and pushed inside him. Dean cried out and bowed off the bed, the sound trembling on his tongue for a moment before Sam kissed him and swallowed it, muffling it; stealing it. They both moaned and Dean dragged his fingers down Sam’s back, remembering a line of tattooed symbols that were no longer there even as Sam pushed his hips up and thrust into him again.

Dean’s heat was burning and Sam’s cold was painful but neither of them pulled away, both of them clung and held on, wrapped their arms around each other and took this because they could. And when Dean’s heart began to thunder faster, frantically trying to pump blood through a body that no longer wanted it, when his panting breath hitched over Sam’s tongue and it wasn’t from pleasure, but because his lungs would not take in oxygen anymore, when Sam’s cold stopped being so cold, neither of them cared. Dean _wanted_ this and Sam… Sam quickly decided that he wanted him to have it.

Dean gasped, breath shallow and labored, nearly painful with his heart beating so heavy in the back of his throat. Sam watched him, stroking his fingers lightly down Dean’s working throat as he fucked him through it. The idea did amuse him on some distant, juvenile level; literally fucking him to death, but he didn’t stop and he watched it happen.

Dean came with a whimper and a quiet shudder, creeping death speeding the process a little. His fingers flexed and relaxed on the backs of Sam’s shoulders and he closed his eyes, pleasure a faint grey shadow over everything else.

Sam only knew that Dean was still alive because he could hear the stuttering sound of his dying heart, feel the reluctant shifting of his blood under his fingers and mark the ever so slight rise and fall of his breathing. He withdrew from his body and sat up, leaning his back against the headboard, head tilted to one side to watch Dean’s face.

“Dean,” Sam whispered. He stroked his fingers down the length of his neck, felt his pulse there, _bump, bump, bump_ , and slid down on the bed beside him. He pressed his mouth to the curve of Dean’s shoulder and felt him tremble. “Go to sleep now.”

Dean smiled a little and his eyes moved beneath his eyelids. He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t. They were heavy. He wanted to tell Sammy about the tombstones with no names that glowed in the dark, but he was too tired. He wanted to tell Sammy that he was going to be six hundred and sixty-six and hear him laugh about it, but he was _so_ tired.

Sam hummed softly and waited. “Close your eyes now, Dean,” he whispered, even though Dean’s eyes were already closed. “Go to sleep.”

 

  
**XXX**   



End file.
